Big 2005 Movies

Update 2003-10-21: Dennis Quaid has signed on to star as a 49-year-old ad salesman struggling with major life changes such as a corporate takeover, a hard-charging young boss, a pregnant wife and his teenage daughter going off to college.

Update 2004-02-12: Cast news: Topher Grace (That ’70s Show) will play the younger boss, Selma Blair will play his unhappy wife and Scarlett Johannson (Lost in Translation) will play Quaid’s daughter, with whom Grace is having an affair. David Paymer (Line of Fire) will play another worker at the company.

Update 2005-01-01: Film changed names from Synergy and moved release date way up in the year.

Update 2003-06-10: The director’s name, which I left out of the previous newsbit, is Chris Wedge. A bunch of the voice cast has been announced and it includes: Mel Brooks, Halle Berry, Ewan McGregor, Drew Carey, Jim Broadbent, Stanley Tucci, Dianne Wiest, D.L. Hughley, Jamie Kennedy and Harland Williams.The film is set complete robot-populated world except, of course, the robots will act just like people with metal bodies just as in Ice Age and, for that matter, Lion King the animal characters acted like people in animal costumes. Should be visually entertaining and the writers have a track record in creating good characters.

Update 2005-02-17: Changed main movie URL to official site. Previously pointed to Box Office Prophets Sin City page. Just watched the trailer, this looks awesome!

Update 2005-01-28: Previously known as Danny the Dog, this long-delayed flick features Li as a man raised from early childhood by a gangster (Bob Hoskins) to be a pure fighting machine. Kept in a cage, never taught to read or write, and to attack and fight any time Hoskins removes his dog collar, Li makes buckets of money in illegal gladiator-style fights.

One day Hoskins has a car accident that leaves him in a coma and Li is let loose to fend for himself in the aftermath. Freeman, a blind piano teacher, takes him in; Kerry Condon is the romantic interest. The gangsters come looking for Li…

Leading roles will be played by Gerard Butler (Timeline, the second Lara Croft mishegas), Wes Bentley (the creepy neighbor kid from American Beauty), Zachary Ty Bryan (the tall blonde kid from Home Improvement, Jay Rodan, Louis Mandylor, Costas Mandylor, Gavin Rossdale (lead singer of rock band Bush), Jimmy Jean-Louis and Nelson Vargas.

Update 2003-05-05: Release date now sometime in Summer, 2005.

Update 2003-10-03: Oops. Diesel decided not to film back to back sequels and will do Riddick and not this one. Instead Ice Cube will play the three-time loser turned secret agent (the new focus of the series, which Revolution Studios still hopes will become a longlived franchise) and the film will focus on the thriller aspects rather than the Diesel-based extreme sports angle of the first movie.

Coming aboard as director will be Lee Tamahori (Mulholland Falls, Along Came a Spider, and the most recent Bond, Die Another Day), replacing Rob Cohen. Tamahori, another New Zealander, must be a busy man these days–IMDB shows him directing four movies to be released in 2004 and this one for June, 2005.

Update 2004-01-29: More casting news: Zooey Deschanel (Elf, Almost Famous) and Mos Def (Italian Job, The Woodsman) will play Trillian and Ford Prefect, respectively. Def is an interesting (in a good way) choice to play a character few readers of the book would have visualized as a person of color.

Production is now scheduled to begin April 19 (2004) in London according to Variety.

Let me say upfront that this is just another example of Hollywood’s lack of creativity and a serious studio mistake.

Update 2002-08-13: Petersen is looking to make Troy first, this is the story based on the Trojan War as declaimed in Homer’s Iliad. Puts Batman: Y1 back in the picture for an earlier start.

Update 2003-02-04: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) has signed with Warner Brothers to direct the next Batman film, though no news on which Batman story (Year One, vs. Superman, etc.) will be featured.

Update 2003-09-13: Christian Bale (American Psycho, Equilibrium) will play the Caped Crusader.

Update 2004-01-06: Now reflecting the expected name. Joining the cast are Katie Holmes as Rachel and Cillian Murphy as a villain. Also, there are reports that the production is heading to Iceland for some fighting on ice while principal photography starts in London in February.

Ewan McGregor stars in this science fiction flick as a “harvested being” who discovers what that means and goes on the run. Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean, Djimon Hounsou, and Steve Buscemi are the other big names in what will be Bay’s first film not produced by Jerry Bruckenheimer.

Josh Lucas stars as the senior pilot in the human wing of the naval air force. Sam Shepard plays the Captain who runs the program and becomes the villain when his plans come unglued.

Update 2005-01-01: Apparently the title may change before final release, IMDB now lists it as The Untitle Mike Judge Comedy. Also, SNL’s Maya Randolph plays a prostitute tricked into participating in the Human Hibernation Project with Wilson. Judge regular Stephen Root (Milton from Office Space, Jimmy James on News Radio) is also in the film.

Note that the currently-listed release date of Sep. 29 is based on the announced European plans, the exact American release is not yet public.

Update 2004-03-03: Title change but this is indeed the continuation of the Fox TV series Firefly. Production starts in June (2004). The movie is set about six months after the TV show left off, and centers on two passengers on board the ship who attract trouble to the crew.

Update 2005-01-01: Scarlett Johanson and Hilary Swank are now casted in the lead female roles.

Update 2003-11-13: Release date firms up a bit thanks to Coming Soon!, bonus on-set article from Reuters as principle photography completes.

Update 2005-01-02: Despite the last entry here, the film was delayed a year with Gilliam telling interviewers he will deliver a final cut to the studio in June, 2005, working on it during breaks from Tideland, another film that might come out in 2005.

Update 2003-11-16: Jackson is scheduling principal production to run for the second half of 2004, targeting a pre-Xmas ’05 release.

Update 2004-01-27: Naomi Watts is now signed to star as the big ape’s romantic interest. Director Jackson said he will “approach King Kong as a drama, not as a fantasy, not as anything other than a straight drama and explore what would really happen in that situation and I think would be interesting;” production starts in August, 2004, Down Under.

Update 2005-01-01: Changed the movie’s link to point to Kong is King, which is not the official site but does have a great blog and director Peter Jackson’s video production blog.

Update 2005-02-03: Casting: Jack Black (not a good sign), Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis (Gollum in Lord of the Rings, doing the same acting behind the digitized image here as the great ape).

Update 2002-09-13: Pitt dropped out to do Petersen’s Troy movie and this flick is looking like 2005 if at all.

Update 2004-02-27: Rumor has it this picture may be back from the dead, with Aronofsky working to simplify the production in order to reduce the budget from $75M to about $40M. Hugh Jackman may step in to the lead in place of Brad Pitt. We’ll see.

Update 2005-01-01: Jackman is starring with Rachel Weisz as co-star; production allegedly began 11/01/04, so a 2005 release is possible but no solid date as of this writing.

Update 2005-01-31: Weisz let slip a bit more information while promoting Constantine; still no precise release date but almost certainly 2005. She said the movie is extremely original and centers around her and Jackman’s search over centuries for the Fountain of Youth, driven by the intensity of their love for each other.

Update 2005-01-01: Reports are that a script is in hand but financing still to be finalized though looking good for a late 2005 release.

Update 2005-01-01: This will be shown as part of PBS’ American Masters TV series, not released theatrically.